Major PR firms agree not to edit clients' Wikipedia entries

Updated 8:17 am, Thursday, June 12, 2014

People learn how to edit Wikipedia pages during an event at Brown University in 2013. Eleven PR firms have agreed to follow the site's editing guidelines.

People learn how to edit Wikipedia pages during an event at Brown University in 2013. Eleven PR firms have agreed to follow the site's editing guidelines.

Photo: Steven Senne, Associated Press

Major PR firms agree not to edit clients' Wikipedia entries

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For years, Wikipedia and the public relations industry have battled over what the online encyclopedia's administrators once termed "suspicious edits" - changes to Wikipedia's publicly edited pages benefiting the firms' clients.

On Tuesday, 11 major public relations firms pledged to honor Wikipedia's editing guidelines.

The deal comes after the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, said in October that hundreds of editing accounts may have been "sock puppets" - users who deceived the site and broke conflict-of-interest rules by writing content for hire. In 2011, Bell Pottinger, one of the United Kingdom's largest public relations companies, was found to have been manipulating Wikipedia entries for its clients.

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"There always was this Cold War between Wikipedia editors and the PR industry," said Andrew Lih, a professor at American University who helped broker this week's deal and has written a book on Wikipedia.

Talks of truce began in February, when a group of PR representatives, Wikipedians and academics met in Washington to discuss the relationship between the industry and the digital encyclopedia.

Phil Gomes, a vice president of Edelman, one of the firms that signed the pledge, said that the statement was a "logical milestone" toward a cooperative relationship. It could also influence what he described as the industry's "bad actors" to adhere to guidelines.

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"We recognize Wikipedia's unique and important role as a public knowledge resource," a statement by the PR firms read. "We also acknowledge that the prior actions of some in our industry have led to a challenging relationship with the community of Wikipedia editors."

Wikipedia urges against editing any pages that could present a conflict of interest, such as financial gain.

And friction over who is permitted to contribute to which portions of the site, in general, have existed since Wikipedia was founded in 2001.

The group of companies said they would abide by the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use and "act in accordance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, particularly those related to 'conflict of interest.' "

William Beutler, president of Beutler Ink and a longtime Wikipedia editor, organized the initial meeting in Washington. He said that most PR firms have a desire play by Wikipedia's rules.

"Nobody thinks this statement is going to solve everything," he said. "It solves the problem that there was not an open discussion going on."

Beutler advocates the creation of a separate organization to oversee Wikidpedia content issues, which would give public relations firms and others a more direct route to requesting changes to pages without engaging in unethical editing.

Kevin Gorman, a Wikipedia editor and Wikipedian-in-Residence at UC Berkeley said the statement is a major step.

"I suspect that this is the largest opportunity that Wikipedia will get to establish a solid working relationship with the PR industry that allows them to function while preserving the integrity of the encyclopedia," he said.

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